Bopomofo Keyboard

Copy & Paste Bopomofo Keyboard Tool

You can use the keyboard below to type in the bopomofo spelling of a chinese word, and you can find the chinese word and the pinyin pronunciation. Then you can copy and paste the words from the bottom text field into other documents.

To use:

1. Type in one or more bopomofo symbols. It may take a while for the keyboard to load initially, so you may need to wait. If the keyboard is loaded, then you should see the keys that you press in the upper-right text field, and a list of matches will appear directly to the right of the keyboard.
2. Select an item from the list directly to the right of the keyboard. When you press on an entry in the list, then the text field below the keyboard will display that entry in larger letters. You can select other entries from the list by using the up and down arrow keys, or you can use the scrollbar and your mouse.
3. Copy and paste the text from below the keyboard. This will be useful if you do not have a chinese keyboard.

XML Bopomofo map file.

If you would like to use the same XML source file that the above keyboard uses, then you can download it: bopomofomap.xml (The file does not include an xml header though, if you don't mind). It maps about 7233 bopomofo spellings to their chinese words. If you have a more comprehensive online bopomofo dictionary or database, please e-mail it to me at .

Each character in the bopomofomap.xml file is a numbered tag. For example, the <12549> tag means the character ㄅ. For numbered tag, the immediate children will be more numbered tags that follow that character in a bopomofo spelling.

Unicode strings are found in <u> tags. Inside of each <u> tag are a number of <c> tags, which are the sequence of character in the unicode string. Each unicode string in the file has the format of "[chinese symbol]: [bopomofo spelling] ([pinyin])".

Now, here's the piece of information which wraps everything up: the bopomofo spelling of each chinese symbol (in the unicode strings) in the file is equal to the concatenation of the parent numbered tags from the root of the file to the unicode string in which the chinese character exists.